Virginia Tech students described the mayhem on campus on Monday and criticised officials for not shutting the university down quickly enough after 33 people were killed including a gunman.
”I recognised the sound of gunfire but was mostly confused …. I looked around at the other students on the drillfield, most of them confused like myself … it clicked in everyone’s head immediately the sound we heard was a gun shot and everyone started running. I went back to the dorm, locked the door, and turned on the news.”
”It hits you in the heart. It’s more of a shock to me because I’m an engineering major and when that list [victims’ names] comes out, I know I’m going to see some friends on there and its scaring me inside right now.”
”I’m pretty outraged that someone died in a shooting in a dorm at 7 o’clock in the morning and the first email about it had no mention of locking down the campus, no mention of canceling classes,” Piatt told CNN.
”They just mentioned that they were investigating a shooting,” he said. ”That’s pretty ridiculous. Meanwhile, while they sent out that email, 21 people got killed.”
”He’s a friend that called from Iraq and was putting out his concerns to everybody over here. He’s a soldier over there, and was just wondering and making sure everybody’s OK,” Waldron told CNN.
”We were inside the classroom maybe five or 10 minutes and our teacher never showed up,” said Merrifield (21) a senior majoring in animal science. ”Somebody came in and said the place is on lock-down. And when the teacher never showed up and we found out we were on lock-down, we all took off running.”
Students were alerted by announcements over campus loudspeakers, he said.
”There was a voice that just kept repeating, ‘Gunman on campus, stay indoors, get away from windows,’ over and over, basically,” said Merrifield. – Reuters